Tortured Souls (On Hold)

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I am not really sure when to say it all started, maybe it has been this way for generations, and I am just now seeing the pattern.  It doesn’t help that I stay drunk as much as possible, but dealing with the demons is just so exhausting, it is best to just let them have their way so I can have some peace.

 I grew up with both my parents, and you assume that is a good thing, but in my case, it definitely was not.  My father is evil.  My mother came from a religious zealot family, who drove her mad I would have to say.  Not that she hasn’t leaned in that tendency a bit herself, at times, at least where I am concerned.

We lived in a housing project, no surprise there.  What do you expect when your mother was fifteen when she got pregnant, and your dad was only sixteen himself?  I guess the odds were never in my favor, and living in the projects only compounded the issues that were already there. In the projects you add hopeless to the mix, and you get apathy and despair at its maximum potential.

I never really understood the project housing concept.  Why would you stick a bunch of alcoholic and drug dependent people in the same location and expect something good to come out of it?  It just doesn’t make sense.  I think it is society’s way of saying they are doing a good deed.  They have housing after all; we give them money every month to support their drug habit, what more do they need?  I think it is the easy way to forget and ignore people that make you uncomfortable.  We are after all, disposable, aren’t we?  What good has a drug addict ever done?

Social housing isn’t the real reason I am screwed up though.  It seems no one is really interested in finding out who I really am, deep down inside, and I certainly don’t make it easy to get close.  I learned early on to build walls, high ones, so that I can protect myself as best as possible from all the hate, anger, and rage all around me.  I walk around in a constant state of pain, but what other choice do I have?  The alcohol was supposed to help ease the pain, but it doesn’t.  What a total line of bullshit that is.  It makes me care less about the bad stuff, but that is only temporary at best.  It doesn’t make all the bad stuff go away; far from it.

I am only beginning to understand what brought my mother to this spectacular pinnacle of existence; that has left me bereft of any emotion other than hate.  I hate my mother for not walking away from my dad.  I hate my dad for being such an abusive bastard.  I hate God too.  Most of all, I hate myself.  I hate living, but I’m too afraid to die.  I am afraid the demons will get control of me, and that is even worse than my father on a drunken binge. I am trying desperately to understand the history that has brought me to this point in my life, at only twenty-four years old.  I should already have at least one if not more babies of my own.  I want kids, I think.  I want the unconditional love they offer anyway, but I am in no position to be a mother.  That is why I have been real careful to use birth control pills and condoms with my sex partners, as I am also not keen on adding a sexually transmitted disease to my list of issues.

I keep thinking every guy will be different from the last one, but they never are.  They can’t see who I really am either.  Who am I to judge really, they are just as messed up as I am, so is it really their fault?

My ex-husband, Brad, was a real “dream boat”!  I am not sure why I thought I wouldn’t marry someone like my dad, but I did.  He seemed so nice at first.  I was 18, and had just graduated from high school with honors.  The fact that I graduated was reason enough to celebrate in the projects, but with honors was a feat of genius.  I am smart, real smart when it comes to textbook type matters, not so much when it comes to people.  I studied and got good grades because it was the only thing I had control over in my crazy world.

 He was twenty-one, and had that Johnny Depp kind of sexy bad boy thing going on.  I was hooked like a crack addict on him from the moment he looked at me.  We had sex in his car on our second date, and then I just couldn’t get enough.  I married him a year later, and that was when the beatings began.  He was a drug dealer, something he neglected to mention to me while we were dating.  He was a mid-ranking member of a small gang that serviced the projects I had grown up in.  He never did any of the deliveries; he managed the distribution to the scum that strolled the sidewalks in the project.  He knew how to keep people in-line, and was real good at serving out a beating.  I unfortunately was well-versed within six months of being married.

The last night before I got the nerve to call the cops was particularly brutal.  He had brought home a “friend” he wanted me to entertain.  By entertain, I don’t mean cook a nice meal and bake a cake.  I told him no.  I found out that he doesn’t take “no” all that gracefully.  He beat me so bad that he broke my arm and one of my legs.  He had the audacity to drink a beer with his buddy while I laid there crying.  Beating me was one thing, but making me his whore was another.  When he left later that night, I dialled 911, and they took me to the hospital.  They were able to prosecute him.  He is serving a twenty-five year sentence for drug dealing and domestic battery. 

Through it all, I guess I can understand my mother better, and why she made the choices she did.  I still hate her, but I can empathize with her plight.  That is why I am sitting by her hospital bed willing to hear her apologize for the crappy life she gave me.  To let her share her story, so hopefully, mine will make a little more sense.